First time I ever knew you refuse money."

"Ah, but that's only a shilling. I want a lot."

"Well, of all the impudence! I shan't give you any more, so toddle."

"Nobody asked you--I say, I know!"

"Know what?"

"About the hundred pounds."

"What hundred pounds?" said Waller, starting.

"What you are going to get for ketching that chap," said the man, with a
grin.

"Catching what chap?" cried Waller sharply.

"Ah, you know. Why, I always sleep with my eyes open. It's a hundred
pounds for ketching that spy, as they calls him; and as he was caught in
my woods I say halves."

"You don't know what you are talking about," cried Waller fiercely,
blustering to hide the faint qualm he felt. "Spy! Hundred pounds!
Halves! Here, you had better be off before you get into a row. Your
woods, indeed! What next?"

"I d'know, and don't want to. All I know is that they are wild, and as
much mine as anybody else's. Now then, what about them halves?"

"Look here, Bunny; what have you got in your head?"

"Hidees, Master Waller. Never you mind what I have got in my head; it's
what have you got up in your room where you are always cobbling and
tinkering and making things?"

"Bunny!" cried Waller, staggered for the moment out of his assurance.

"Yes; that's me, Master Waller, and I want fifty pound. Lot of money,
ar'n't it? And I want money. You are a rich gentleman, and don't, and
ought to give me the whole hundred. But I don't want to be grasping,
because it's you, and so I says halves."

"But, Bunny--" cried Waller.

"Oh, it ar'n't no use for you to talk. I know all about it, and the
soldiers coming to sarch and then going away because they couldn't find
nothing, when you had got him hid away all the time."

"Oh, Bunny!" cried Waller huskily.

"That's me. I tell you I know, so it's no use to tell no taradiddlums
about it. I see you taking him out for a walk last night to stretch his
legs."

Waller's eyes fixed in a stare, and his lips parted as he breathed
harder than usual.

"You see, I'm about arter dark when other folks goes to sleep. I come
and had a look at him t'other night when you thought everybody was
a-bed."

"You coward!" said Waller, in a hoarse whisper, and his hands opened and
shut as he felt ready to spring at the man's throat.

"That I warn't. Man ar'n't no coward who swarms up that there ivy,
which as like as not will break away, being as brittle as carrots."

"You came t